on the pulse - 2021 - #2 - steven wilson, lil skies, th1rt3en, celeste, arlo parks

Recently in the aftermath of my Weezer review, after I said that a lot of other acts deserved the attention that band gets, I got a comment suggesting I should have just reviewed them instead of Weezer. My answer is to just do both - this is On The Pulse!

Fell From The Tree - ENOUGH - So full disclosure, this is a project from a fellow critic and music writer who sent this over to me a few weeks ago but just recently was released - but Fell From The Tree has been active since ~2018 making a grainy, pulsating brand of anxious indie pop with enough ‘very online’ emo signifiers to match some pretty sticky hooks. Early projects definitely felt rough around the edges with some muddy mixing and so-so vocals, but now we’ve got this album… and full disclosure again, this was a review I was planning for my first episode, but it’s a surprisingly dense album to dig into and I wanted to give the project a little more breathing room, and it’s not like 2021 has been incredibly busy out of the gate. And… well, it’s kind of patchy, playing off fluttery but grainy clatters of percussion as the synths, keyboards and guitars churn, with touches of strings to punch up the dramatic flair, almost approaching trip-hop in places, playing to a feeling of pensive instability that might be intentional but probably drags a little too long to land as much tension as it’s attempting. What I’m saying is that the album’s density is a bit deceptive - between the percussion and the lyrics that have a very conversational, constructed but overwritten feel, it has the feel of constantly second-guessing itself which can be compelling if there was a bit more poetic flair. It reminds me a lot of certain stripes of emo in the late 90s and early 2000s, where there is compelling drama if you dig for it, but it’s not direct enough to land impact but not flowery enough to suck you in on wordplay alone, and in the mid-section of the project it starts seriously feeling turgid and dragging. Some of it isn’t helped by the vocals - Hannah Jocelyn’s vocals are so tightly tracked and touched up with synthetic processing that they can make her wordy style blur together, without the clearer punch that some of her more emotive moments could use, and they’re all pushed a little too deeply in the mix; again, I know it’s intentional to amplify the anxiety of being caught up in one’s own thoughts, but it feels a bit too clunky and abortive to flow into it well, and the shifting fidelity of the percussion only amplifies that fractured feeling. Really, outside of ‘Weird Place’ just being stacked with so many great little turns of phrase, ‘Long Road’ having a great mantra-like structure that’s insanely catchy, and a pretty great synth build off ‘Breaking Point’ that unfortunately ends off really tinny, it feels like the entire album is set up for the massive one-two punch that are the last two songs, ‘Dress’ and ‘Good Advice’, where she fully comes into full view, faces the world and accepts herself with the first moment where her style shows every shade of emotional nuance and lyrical detail - terrific payoff, especially with that strings arrangement, to be sure, but it took a while to get there. Still, such a strong ending justifies the entire project, and if you want an emo-leaning indie pop/electronic project that speaks to the trans experience with such sparkling clarity and lands on a moment of euphoria, this is one you want to hear. Solid 7/10, you’ll want to hear it.

Tenant From Zero - FLIGHT - okay, this was a fun surprise. I went Bandcamp hunting again and came across some sophistipop that clearly is going for that retro-80s vibe, but feels like way less of a pastiche and that intrigued me. Meet Paul Darrah, a Brooklyn singer-songwriter with this as his full-length debut album under the name Tenant From Zero, where I’d argue his approach is somewhere between Spandau Ballet, Roxy Music, and maybe a dash of 2010s Destroyer, especially in its moodier moments that also help it not feel like a throwback. It also helps that the production is both modern and downright excellent - perfectly crisp drum machines to flesh out the texture around the pulsing bass, fluttery synths, pealing guitars, excellently placed horn and strings passages, and a frontman who somehow manages to lean into an 80s lounge vibe without sounding sleazy, boring, or cheesy - and given just how much an album like this lives and dies on a brand of smoldering cool, that’s really damn hard to pull off, especially when you get a flashier song like ‘The Bomb You Dropped’ which is very nearly too silly to work! Hell, Alex Cameron has spent the past few years playing a note-perfect parody of this vibe, so the fact that Darrah can still make this brand of cool stick while playing the complex, brooding lover with the sort of lyrical detail that screams effortlessly rich jetsetter is a testament to his charisma and how well the texture sticks. I think what also helps is that when you dig into the content, while the cooing backing vocals imply a lot of feminine companionship, they’re rarely in the song explicitly - the distance is palpable, more often than not the focus on his small mundane details in contrast to how the women feel larger than life highlight just how lonely and bored he feels, where his coolness turns to an anxious chill as he grapples with how his perfect words and poise aren’t enough to save them. It’s probably the only way he could get away with ‘Properly Wrecked By John’, a callout of an ex who embraces a brand of Biblical moral superiority but also has ‘I’m not over you’ scribbled all over it. But it’s also why the sad slow-burn ballads work like ‘After’ and ‘Yellow & Blue’ - even if the album ends on slower, acoustic moments, the pathos is still there! And while it has some of that 80s throwback vibe, like Kaputt and Poison Season it anchors in an older approach for something mature and rich. Solid 8/10, deserves way more attention on production alone, and oh yeah, it fucks.

Portrayal Of Guilt - We Are Always Alone - alright, screamo is on the docket again, although in this case we’re dealing with an act with heavier, more guttural elements of post-hardcore, grindcore, and even black metal - a little more downbeat and raw than the stuff I normally seek out, but there was enough of a melodic sensibility to their 2018 debut that made me want to give this a chance and… well, I wish more of it had translated to this sophomore album, which I do think is a bit of a step back in terms of tune if not sonic direction. Indeed, if there are words I’d use to describe this album they start with ‘fragmented’ and work out from there, where black metal tremolo swells barely last between spacious, creaking warps , bass-heavy grind passages, and weirdly “normal”-sounding post-hardcore passages, which for a project clocking under a half-hour leaves you wishing there was a little more developed focus in the compositions. I’m also not really crazy about the vocals - you get a black metal cackle more often than most that just doesn’t have the varied but visceral intensity that they brought to their debut, and the cleaner vocals don’t not help outside of maybe ‘Garden of Despair’. Yeah, the bass work is consistently ominous and when the drums are brought in there’s an insane intensity, and I can’t deny that the graphic lyrics have a consistent, blood-smeared depressive quality where the band rends themselves asunder in gory detail… but it’s not like nihilistic decay with a more spacious bent is unfamiliar territory, especially in black metal, and while it’s detailed in trying and failing to find some form of transcendence within that pain, it doesn’t feel like there’s much more beyond it. The odd thing is that for as fractured and frustrating as this is… I dunno, where so much metalcore falls flat for me, the black metal and screamo elements create this sinuous crushing force, where the grooves works to ramp up the implacable vibe and I found it clicking, albeit a little less than their debut. So with that in mind… very light 7/10, likely more for the crowd who likes this sound way more grisly and less melodic, but it still mostly clicked, so there’s something there.

Goat Girl - On All Fours - Okay, this is an interesting act: all-woman post-punk act that formed in the latter half of the 2010s, signed to Rough Trade, put out their debut in 2018, and their sound was pretty damn interesting: half shambling, ramshackle country, half jangling feminist art punk, and I kept getting a lingering impression of Tropical Fuck Storm. This is their sophomore album and… well, if you expecting the country edges of the sound to stick around, that did not happen: that’s been swapped out for sharper, burbling synth lines and firmer new wave dance grooves, and I’m not sure that was the best fit. For one, the vocals have the sort of dead-eyed, flat presence can get lost in the mix - not for the best when Goat Girl is still a pretty literate band and there’s a fair amount of sharp social commentary interwoven across the album, mostly reflecting the slow existential horror of the world breaking down around them, leaning on the environmental catastrophe and disaffected abuses of capitalism as well as managing one’s own deeper anxiety. But for another, as solid as the basslines might be, the synths on top of them have an underweight, buzzy but oily tone that might contribute to the creeping sense of dread but don’t really punch up the melody enough to add solid colour. Yeah, the shuffling, contorted horns and burbling synths make for a pretty interesting moody juxtaposition on ‘Jazz (In The Supermarket)’, but I’m left thinking that Billy Nomates landed more punch with near-identical subject matter last year, even if this is certainly better produced - frankly, I enjoyed their song about literally dissecting Boris Johnson a lot more called ‘Where Do We Go From Here’, especially as it leans into the body horror across chunks of the imagery on the album. What also doesn’t help is the tempo and pacing - this album is content to meander and sprawl across its darker, downbeat elements, but the grooves don’t have that thicker shambling punch so much as just sitting on your face… which, of course, it’s intentional and can produce some solid vibes, especially on its back half, but when I’m not really enamoured with the hooks or melodic tones, it makes for a well-formed but dreary listen that didn’t stick as much as their debut. So… strong 6/10, pretty decent album, but I did want to like it more.

Fickle Friends - Weird Years (Season 1) - So here’s the odd thing about Fickle Friends: I remember when I first covered them back in 2018 and I was more lukewarm on them than I wanted to be, mostly because despite decent writing I felt the sharper, blaring grooves and production didn’t always flatter our frontwoman’s vocal tones. And that meant I’ve not returned to that album much and thus didn’t really have expectations for their new EP… but I’ll be damned if this isn’t an improvement. Partially because it feels like the synths grooves have been softened in their tones to better compliment the vocals but kept the sharper rollick and just enough of the edge and flash to remain recognizable as Fickle Friends in comparison with Shura or the Japanese House. No, it’s not quite on the same splashy vibrance of a Carly Rae Jepsen, but Fickle Friends targeting a softer, cooler vibe to infuse their longings to break free of quarantine to find love, or reflect on what might seem like simpler times, is a pretty natural fit, especially when the album ends with a plea to just give it time to resolve. Overall, it feels like a slice of solid Fickle Friends songs… but it’s not quite great, and I’m struggling to pin down why it doesn’t quite have that added spark. Maybe a bit too beholden to its influences, maybe it’s how I’m not sure there’s a hook that really ‘pops’ here, maybe it’s how I still feel they haven’t quite hit their potential, but as it is, it’s still very good. 7/10, curious to hear the next season.

Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams - …I should stop being surprised that the 2000s revival is kicking into gear - but can I ask why it seems like we’re reviving the most forgettable or frustrating parts of it? And that’s nothing against Arlo Parks - this is her debut album, she’s winning over a ton of critical acclaim with this approach and sound and I’m sure people are charmed by the light, rollicking sweetness of her presentation and compositions. But this sounds like it comes straight from the coffee-shop adult alternative scene between 2003 and 2006, and given that I still remember a surprising amount of it, it just doesn’t interest me whatsoever The two genre labels I’ve seen thrown around this are neo-soul and bedroom pop, and while I hear parallels to the more organic tones and grooves of the most tasteful acts that found success in this lane before Alicia Keys’ percussion-heavy approach overwhelmed it, there’s none of the rough edges or fractured intimacy that makes the best of bedroom pop even if it matches her vocals; if anything, it sounds way more professional and polished for primetime with its gentle keys, supple bass, tastefully muted guitars, and admittedly pleasant drumwork, not a single element out of place. Now I can already hear some of you protesting by pointing at the lyrics and highlighting just how much detail and colour is there to paint the scene… but for as much as this album is trying to prise out human vulnerability and emotion through these pictures, in both its stories and metatext, the presentation is way too sedate to colour them beyond the mildest of tones; its “hip-hop” touches are delivered from Paul Epworth, whose soft-focus production fits Adele more than any street poetry, no matter how twee it winds up, with ‘For Violet’ as the one notable exception for getting a bit darker in its crackling spare atmospherics. But okay, there’s something to be said about doing this sound well, and there are adult alternative acts I really like, but that’s because there’s often a magnetic intensity to the presentation like from Sweet Whirl or Sara Bareilles - and Arlo Parks is way too studied and reserved for that - or the poetry has some sort of kick to it, but with these songs I often feel like we’re observing the soft-focus drama rather than finding its pathos, both in and out of Parks’ experience - it’s one reason ‘Eugene’ and to a lesser extent ‘Green Eyes’ are some of the better songs because they get to some of the uglier human reality of these failed lesbian relationship scenes which winds up feeling more real than her explorations of alcohol abuse and depression. I dunno, for being on a label called Transgressive, this is anything but - being tasteful doesn’t mean it’s interesting. 6/10

Celeste - Not Your Muse - Ooh, now this is something up my alley, absolutely - very husky, stripped back R&B and soul with a more organic, bassy palette, Celeste proved on her EPs that she could handle both restraint and real power, so now on her full-length debut… well, here’s the thing, if I just came down on Arlo Parks for playing to a certain tasteful mid-2000s adult alternative neo soul vibe, surely Celeste is not that far removed herself from that, right? Well, this is where the details matter, because Celeste is a singer with raspy texture and it lends the mixes more organic bite with hints of Macy Gray and Amy Winehouse. In fact, it’s fascinating to see the contrast - where Arlo Parks will deflect with observation that doesn’t quite reveal more beyond an eye for details, Celeste’s sultry deflection comes through self-possessed exposure that might feel more a bit theatrical but also more intense, an album that opens with a proclamation that she’ll be defined by no man, that she is more than just a muse to their stories; and then immediately opens up the frame to a more complicated picture in claiming her stories. And that’s a really damn potent starting point, and for the first four or five songs I was really pulled into her drama… but the momentum didn’t quite last as strongly as I was hoping. I think part of it is that the edge began ebbing away for a much smoother retro brand of neo-soul that was certainly tasteful and agreeable, but felt a little less fiery and potent, and the meant niggling issues in vocal mixing and writing that felt a little thin come more to the forefront. And you can tell that she definitely leans on the atmosphere, which feels a little cleaner and thinner on texture by the back half - yes, the strings on ‘A Kiss’ are smoky and sultry as hell and I’m convinced that Celeste will one day make a fantastic Bond theme, but beyond that the album loses some momentum, and I’m not going to say the writing ever brings a super distinctive level of detail or flair. I still find this album really charming and easy to like, but it does feel like a debut where Celeste is still finding more of her voice. Good start, so a 7/10, but I’m looking forward to what she does next.

Th1rt3en & Pharoahe Monch - A Magnificent Day For An Exorcism - The funniest thing about this project is how it’s not surprising if you’re familiar with Pharoahe Monch - he’s been playing in more aggro, rock-leaning sounds for decades, at least since the 90s, so to see him take the next step with a live guitarist and drummer makes complete sense, even if there’s some of the raw Grinderman approach that some critics translated as a midlife crisis for Nick Cave instead of drilling into the roots of what’s always been there, just previously in more tasteful packaging. I think that’s where some folks might struggle with this album, because it absolutely feels rougher around the edges with more of a shambling, fractured approach where the guitar work sparks and clatters without the benefit of a strong, coursing groove, and I’m not sure it’s quite as tight as the best in this sound right now, which is odd given how methodical Pharoahe Monch’s lyrical construction is, even if his more theatrical delivery is apropos. But it’s absolutely an album that feels like it’s from an different time as well, especially in how it frames its provocative elements, like all the faux-Satanism, the edgy school shooting framing in ‘The Magician’, playing the satirical racist and spewing all the slurs on ‘Racist’ or leaning into the bad guy framing at ‘666 (Three Six Word Stories')’, or how ‘Scarecrow’ is an entire veiled diss at modern trap MCs foreshadowed on ‘Goats Head’. Playing the brainless on the way to Oz to find your fortune, or a lot of the anti-social media bars on ‘Kill Em All Again’ where that eugenics bar certainly set off alarm bells, I’m not saying he’s wrong here about the industry, but it’s hard to avoid how this reminds me of Eminem’s aimless frustration with the mainstream off of Revival, and the stodgy rock elements don’t always help, which is a shame because the guitars on the outro of ‘Scarecrow’ have a ton of texture and firepower that I wish felt more consistent! And while blunt, visceral detail has been a consistent tool in Pharoahe’s arsenal and maybe he thinks it hits more effectively off the rock elements, it doesn’t have the introspection that has rung through his best work, especially on P.T.S.D. in 2014, which is why the cooldown on ‘Amnesia’ feels like the first moment where the veneers drops away and we get a more sober look at an aging rapper excising old demons. But even then, there’s something to be said about reclaiming the villain in these stories - like Backxwash last year he builds off of Black Sabbath but seems very much aware that a lot of Satanic cultural mythmaking is rooted in appropriating Black culture, which is why it’s frustrating to see him go for cheaper provocation he doesn’t need when in the final moments he exposes the pain that causes him to lash out like this. Still, this feels like the first step of an experiment where they’re still figuring out the loose ends, and Pharoahe Monch can hold a project like this together on force of will, so… light 7/10. It feels weirdly dated and clunky in spots, but around the provocation there’s power.

Lil Skies - Unbothered - …you know, if there was a recent release I’d be excused in completely ignoring going forward, it is Lil Skies, because while I had been generally positive on his initial charting material, that sure as hell didn’t last as both his delivery and sound got increasingly stale and generic, albeit generally competent. But now we’re multiple albums deep and not only has the content not evolved or improved beyond luxury trap flexing, dumping on haters, and more references than usual to weed, at this point Lil Skies’ shortcomings are starting to become glaring, especially in his autotuned delivery where if he doesn’t want to sound like Juice WRLD or Lil Uzi Vert, he’ll wind up sounding like Drake at his most monotone and trap. And say what you will about Drake, but his content on average is more complex and interesting than this - or when he’s getting emo, you get a sense of stakes rather than with Lil Skies who can barely pretend he’s not doing it for the trend-chasing. Or hell, it at least tries to go beyond the standard pile-up of gangsta pile-up and bragging that’s rarely as interesting as it should be - ‘Havin My Way’ has one of the best hooks on the album with Lil Durk, and even that feels like a pretty direct riff on ‘Drip Too Hard’, and while I liked Wiz Khalifa on ‘Excite Me’, it’s pretty obvious he’s ripping off Kid Cudi and the instrumental flatters him way more than Lil Skies. But fine, Lil Skies is a more competent technical MC than most, so if his production was above average, this could probably still wind up enjoyable at the lowest common denominator… and wow, it’s uneven. Forget having any consistent melodic identity, the percussion fidelity is often so inconsistent that you’re often stuck some of the most frustratingly mixed drum machines - you get a passable hook on ‘Take 5’ but the snare sounds tinny as hell, a decent bounce on ‘Dead Broke’ and ‘Riot’ but the bass swamps out the mix, and then there are later album cuts like ‘Locked Up’ that sound like cheap filler, probably reinforced by so many of these songs featuring a fragment of a hook, a single verse, and maybe a bridge. In other words, I may have called Josh A derivative and stale, but he at least tries harder than this, which can’t even make the most of a major label budget to not sound cheap and lazy. light 4/10, you already forgot this existed.

Steven Wilson - THE FUTURE BITES - …I was planning a full-length review for this one, until I realized that I’ve been listening to Steven Wilson long enough to know exactly what was going on with this and it doesn’t require many words. To put it simply, after hitting two solo projects out of the park with Hand. Cannot. Erase. and To The Bone, this is Steven Wilson falling back into bad habits, specifically tied to his long nascent art pop project No-Man which actually predates Porcupine Tree and was widely held as underrated and influential, but I’ve always found to be a lot of meandering mixed bags at best. But he released an album under that name in 2019 and now in 2021, we’re getting art pop Steven Wilson - which has him all over the airy, burbling analog synthesizers with singing in his upper register and falsetto, less interesting guitar passages when we get them at all, and songs that lose any sense of instrumental direction or pacing. But we’re also getting ‘social commentary’ Steven Wilson, which is the definition of hit-and-miss, especially when you can tell he’s back in the well of broad, anti-consumerism/anti-technology potshots that were tired in the late 90s and become kind of excruciating when you have the anti-social media side dropped in as well. I swear, how is it that Code Orange is the only band that understands that your anti-social media song should have something to say about the fallible human beings using it - it’s the same bland dehumanization parallel between influencer and follower and it barely goes deeper? Hell, the big problem is that it builds off a lot of material Wilson has gone over before - and when he circles vaguely around social media backlash on ‘FOLLOWER’ which somehow winds up as the heaviest song here, it doesn't really go beyond overstimulation - and none of this feels new or all that gripping, to say nothing of how downbeat the entire project is. If so much of this album is about knowing and being able to define one’s self worth, why does it feel like it also wants to take the piss out of even considering the idea - he said there’s fragments of optimism on this album, but outside of a good hook on ‘12 THINGS I FORGOT’ which kind of feels like a Blackfield reject, does it redeem the clunkiest possible shuffling attempt at the concept on ‘EMINENT SLEAZE’? But what might be the most frustrating and sad thing about this album is that it just feels undercooked across the board - the super-polished textures don’t help the warbling atmosphere, it has nowhere near enough good hooks to work for pop, and lyrically it just feels bereft of fresh ideas or insight. Folks, this is the first major disappointment of 2021 for me… I think even Grace For Drowning and Metanoia were better than this. 5/10… man, this isn’t it.